More about the songs

Seven hills

I’ve already talked a bit about the lead song on our new single. It’s the one that people seem to know us best for and the track that we always get asked to play live.

The words were written on one of the many train journeys back to Sheffield when I lived away from the city, although hopefully everyone can relate to it when they think of their hometown.

It took us a long time to get the recording right. We were happy with the first (unreleased) studio version until we re-listened to it months later and realised it was far too hurried. So we went back into the studio and did a new recording which was a much better tempo. I guess we used to play it faster than we do now.

The greatest song of all

The idea for this song came about one Sunday morning when I woke up stupidly early thanks to a broken body clock, I think caused by being in my thirties and also being a new parent. It was sunny so I decided to enjoy a cup of tea outside.

Very few people were up at that time so instead of the usual noise of traffic and garden power tools all I could hear was the sound of the birds singing. It made me realise that most days are usually accompanied by the non-stop thrum of music, be it the kitchen radio, via my mp3 player or at work.

I love music and wouldn’t really choose to have it any other way, but just for a few minutes the peacefulness of the early morning and sound of the birds in the garden made for a perfect start to the day. And it was just about worth the inconvenience of needing a disco nap later to offset the tiredness caused by the early start.

We weren’t sure whether to save this song for our album as it is one of our favourites, but in the end decided to include it on the single as we wanted the b-sides to be good.

There are a couple of quirks to spot in the song. We mistakenly refer to the Peak District as the Peak (Nik says that no outdoorsy person would call it this, so I guess my cover has been blown!) and there’s also a bit of distortion on one of the bass notes that I can hear but everyone else says is unnoticeable. You decide!

You are my home

When playing it live, we usually introduce this as our love song, as I guess it is the closest thing we have to one.

It’s supposed to be a 50-50 male/female vocal split but due to it being quite high for Val to sing we had to turn me my voice up and lower Val’s a little in the mix to make it work.

It’s one of the few songs of ours with no glockenspiel – and the only one so far with handclaps. The chorus is inspired by/stolen from/dedicated to every other good pop song ever that includes na na nas instead of real words!